"Why are you following me?" he asks with a steady voice when we start walking again.
To my relief no one came by as we ate, and we've actually not seen anyone since we left the house. Our surroundings are peaceful, but over time that just makes me even more tense. We're currently walking on a wide road, most likely an old highway, and the suffocatingly hot weather hasn't changed. Based on the roadsigns, we're walking towards a forest, and I don't mind. I can change my plans for a while.
"It's safer that way." I answer.
I'm not lying. It is, but probably not in the way he thinks.
"Safer? How can it be safe to follow a random guy out into the woods?"
I shrug.
"It's my choice."
He laughs at me, but I can still see how he is tense, always aware of his surroundings.
"Seriously?"
I don't answer and he whistles.
"Wow. So you trust anyone? I mean, you just trust me like that?" he makes a wide gesture with one of his hands as he speaks.
After a while he looks at me, probably wanting an answer since I keep quiet.
"You do look like you would kill to survive."
I'm not lying now either and he raises his dark eyebrows at me.
"Straight to the point? Fine with me."
A whistling noice makes both of us stop at once. It sounded like a projectile from an airgun. Many have learned to use small capsules with poison in them since it's hard to get a hand on a gun.
"Airgun." we both say at the same time.
We look at each other, a bit surprised, before I turn to look around. A short moment later I can hear a new whistling sound, close to my right cheek, and just a couple of seconds after the attack started, the guy have gone from joking to dead serious. I see the change clearly in how his posture straighten even further, his hand reaches for the knife I noticed hours ago, and how his eyes darken and narrow. I know the expression very well myself, simply because it looks like my own. It's fascinating. He probably hasn't seen any change with me since the first projectile, but that's simply because I always look like that, prepared to get killed and to fight for my life to survive. Isn't that a great way to live?
As we both turn the way we now know the shots are coming from, I remember he didn't tell me I was wrong earlier. He didn't deny anything at all.
YOU ARE READING
September 2030
General FictionWW3 is destroying an already conflicted world, with Europe as its main battlefield. In the middle of it all, a girl with a shattering past and advanced survival and fighting techniques is searching for her lost brother. Her decisions are completely...
